Is this a spam post? Is the Healthcare Economist working for Pfizer? The answer to these questions are no and no. However, there are two easy ways to get the cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor for a lower price tomorrow: Buy the generic form of Lipitor Buy Lipitor According to Marketplace, on Friday Lipitor will go […]

“We must have a strategy that regulates the financial system as a whole, in a holistic way, not just its individual components.” Ben S. Bernanke, “Financial Reform to Address Systemic Risk” at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., March 10, 2009 In a 2010 short paper, Brunnermeier, Hansen, Kashyap, Krishnamurthy and Lo (2010) […]

In short, yes. California is the land of managed care. Kaiser-Permanente–the managed care poster child–owns one third of the market. Love for managed care is not just in the private market; in 2010, over half of all Medi-Cal and more than one-third of Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in managed care plans. Further, California managed care […]

The head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Don Berwick, announced he would step down from his post on Wednesday. Berwick was a temporary 18 month appointment who Obama hoped would stay on longer. The San Francisco Chronicle reports “The point man for carrying out President Obama’s health care law will be stepping down […]

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers. On this holiday, I will highlight an inspiring quote from USA Today Editor Heidi Dezayas. Mrs. Dezayas was recently diagnosed with diabetes. What is she thankful for this year? “I’m thankful for all the advances in medicine. Years ago, the prognosis for someone with Type 1 wasn’t all that […]

Medicare’s push to evaluate all types of providers is being extended to Inpatient Rehabilitation Hospitals (IRFs). According to Health Reform bill (specifically, Section 3004 of the Affordable Care Act), CMS is required to start publishing quality measures for IRFs by October 1, 2012. This newly created IRF Quality Reporting Program (QRP) currently has proposed two […]

That is the question that that clinicians often have to ask. Depression certainly operates along a scale and it is often difficult to quantify either i) if a person is depressed or ii) how depressed they are. One option to assess patient depression is the PHQ-9. The assessment asks patients nine questions regarding their mental […]

The Medicare billing system is complex. There an alphabet soup of acronyms, (e.g., RVUs, CPT, HCPCS, GPCI) and each of these affects payments in different ways. In addition to the standard payment terms, Medicare is also creating additional payment incentives. These payment incentives fall into three broad categories: Quality reporting e-Prescribing (eRx) Electronic Health Records […]